Needed addition...should be fairly programmer-easy to do in a minor Update of the current 584 version:

One feature missing from Softmaker TextMaker B584 (aka word processor et al) is that unlike OpenOffice and most ALL others, you can not EASILY highlight text -- like in a "highlighter marker" -- in the text editor.

The option would also display as highlighted text if the text is exported to HTML or to PDF, as it does in other competing products.

The "somewhat work-around" discussed in the Help file -- that's hard to locate -- is quite mundane and useless, IMHO. It's not "natural", easy nor is it intuitive

Why ? Because it makes the user go through hoops, for a text-highlighting feature that is very intuitive and straight-forward to use in all other word-processor products.

sven-l wrote:You will find something in the help if you look for highlight or highlighter.

Just invoke Tools=>Customize=>Toolbars=>Edit. Choose "Format" and "Shadings" and drag the symbol into the toolbar. Now you can easily hightlight text directly from the toolbar.[/quote]

OK, thank you, and we will try the above and mention back our findings.

Monday 12 July 2010:

OK, tried it, but the above “highlights” the entire line, not just the user-selected text. AND, the end-user has to completely reselect numerous options each time they simply want to highlight something.

Yes, this COULD be a partial answer, but clearly does not work as well as true user-selectable highlighting does, especially in competing products.

If the above was mentioned in the current WinHelp system, it would be a partially welcome thought, but what IS found mentioned is user-confusing for now.

In my opinion, Sven's advice is not the best choice available. Try Tools Customise Toolbars..., choose "Format" in the left field (Group), scroll down in the right field to "Background colour" and draw it into your toolbar. Now you can select any portion of text and highlight it in any colour you want (even different ones) from the dropdown list.The highlighting is preserved in pdf export, too.

Jossi wrote:In my opinion, Sven's advice is not the best choice available. Try Tools Customise Toolbars..., choose "Format" in the left field (Group), scroll down in the right field to "Background colour" and draw it into your toolbar. Now you can select any portion of text and highlight it in any colour you want (even different ones) from the dropdown list.The highlighting is preserved in pdf export, too.

Ahh, yes. This is indeed the function and option that was or is requested.

Then this is very good news, as the highlighting appears to be retained in all the various file formats that respond to highlighting -- RTF, PDF, .DOC, and the native Softmaker TextMaker file formats. A very "good" situation.

The more important concept:

This now means that Softmaker 2010, well TextMaker 2010, DOES offer highlighting as a sell-able feature. It just needs to be coaxed out enough!

Suggestion: This "was a hidden feature" sequence needs to be added into the WinHelp texts AND a bit of illustrative or a short discussion paragraph needs to be added intro the appropriate WinHelp area as well.

Thank you both, as discussing ideas, and even "problems" that may not be totally there, advances both the application and the end-users.

Joe

Last edited by josephrot on Tue Jul 13, 2010 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ski wrote:Oh dear It would be hugely inconvenient for me not to be able to highlight text easily.I rely on a text highlighting colour system to show up the different reasons why changes have been made. ski

Ski...

Textmaker DOES offer highlighting, and it works well.

Jossi showed me the way, and yes, it works, and it's easy to apply:

Try Tools >> Customise >> Toolbars.... Then, choose "Format" in the left field (Group), scroll down in the right field to "Background colour" and draw it into your toolbar.Now you can select any portion of text and highlight it in any colour you want (even different ones) from the drop-down list.The highlighting is preserved in PDF export, too, as well as the RTF file format or when you save your Textmaker efforts as RTF.

The above instructions actually make it sound harder than it is, but it's quite easy to invoke highlighting and with very few steps to have to take.

sven-l wrote:You will find something in the help if you look for highlight or highlighter.

I came to this discussion AFTER I looked in the Help file and found an exceedingly cumbersome procedure for highlighting that requires the user to go through several steps each time he or she wishes to highlight some text. I was delighted to find the present discussion thread with Jossi's suggestion to go to Tools --> Customize --> Toolbars and select "Format" on the Left and "Background Color" on the right, and then drag that to the toolbar. I hope that this suggestion will replace the inadequate information currently in the Help file.

We had a similar thread in the German forum last week and I came upon an alternate way that might be easier still (at least for some users). If you always use the same colour to highlight text (e.g. yellow), it can be a bit inconvenient that the toolbar symbol goes back to "transparent" after each use. In this case, you can define a character style via Format > Character Style... > New..., name it and choose yellow for "Background colour" in tab "Font" (nothing else). Then go to tab "Style", choose "(floating)" in "Based on" and define a shortcut key (Alt and/or Strg combined with any other key) for this character style. From now on, you can select a text passage and colour it simply by pressing the shortcut.